Francesca Woodman

Slowly but surely, galleries are reaching a breaking point with the art fair circuit. Escape isn’t an option for most galleries. Instead of opting out, we’re seeing a rise in specialized fairs, those that provide an alternative to the white-walled booth model. Moving Image is one of those fairs, and it has all the makings of a solid future.

Ken Johnson on Francesca Woodman at the Guggenheim: “You might think of it as a girl's visual equivalent of “Catcher in the Rye.” It may be sentimental, overwrought, precious and narcissistic, but for all that, it remains a poignant record of adolescent joy, fear, ambition and angst.” Yup. [NY Times]

We completely missed the storyline last week wherein Kara Walker decided to be an art chaperone at Cliff Owens’s P.S.1 performance because she was afraid he might rape someone. Walker had written a score directing the artist to “Force [an audience member] against a wall and demand Sex”, and had given Owens permission to perform the piece; she then wrote him to withdraw the piece, stating that “I refuse to have this idea of mine cause anyone physical harm.” This, I’m sure, came as a great shock to Owens, who must have seen the occasion as a perfect opportunity to commit a heinous felony in full view of an audience at an event publicized using his name and face. Apparently the artists struck a compromise wherein Walker followed Owens around during the performance, just to make sure. That he didn’t rape anyone. [GalleristNY]

The town of Catskill, in upstate New York, is hosting a project titled “Wall Street to Main Street” that aims to bring Occupy artists and local artists together for an arts festival. What caught our eye was the idea that this could be an economic boon to the area; could political art be a tourist draw? [Hudson Valley Almanac, hat-tip ArtINFO]

What we’ve been playing with: this handy little script that pulls images from imgur at random, 50 at a time. Be warned: there’s plenty of porn.

February: a month of multiple things happening, both here and in other places, often at the same time. Which things should you watch occur, and where and when will they occur? We know. Only we know. Enjoy.

The internet might be run on cats, but this sea otter rap proves that all mammals are proper fodder for a meme. [Lair2000.net]

Guards at London’s National Gallery went on strike this past weekend to protest staff cuts, and they’re planning even more walk outs in the days to come. [The Guardian]

In preparation for the Guggenheim’s upcoming exhibition by teen prodigy Francesca Woodman, Cabinet‘s profile on another child genius, the poet Minou Drouet, provides some good background into the life and times of precocious youths. It’s filled with absurd stories – like how the French government locked “this little kitten” in a room to determine whether she wrote her own poems. [Cabinet]

Author Jonathan Franzen, that overly satirical writer about the failures of masculinity and the American dream, rants against ebooks, but ends up sounding like a whiny luddite who doesn’t understand kids nowadays with their new-fangled technology. [The Telegraph]

The Woodmans Date: WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 19TH 2011 – TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 1ST 2011 Venue: Film Forum, 209 W. Houston Street Admission: $12.50 Francesca Woodman’s work is undeniable: her photographs, mostly black-and-white (and often nude) self-portraits, are at once beautiful and gender-political, ethereal and strikingly personal. Her life is similarly attractive to the art public: she committed suicide shortly after leaving art school […]